Church and state: Friends? Enemies? Occasional allies?

As we set off fireworks and grill our hot dogs for the Fourth of July, it's worth pausing a moment to think about what we're celebrating -- and how it's framed by the relationship of church and state.

The conservative wing is represented well -- mostly -- in an editorial in the Deseret News. It notes that "unlike virtually every nation on Earth, the United States was founded on ideas, not on a particular ethnic identity." Those ideas, as it continues, are summed up in Declaration of Independence as right to pursue "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Another difference, according to the newspaper: The rights are granted by a "divine creator," not a government. "That part of our nation's founding, so essential to the essence of America, seems to be getting pushed aside lately by a host of "isms" that include relativism, secularism, atheism and even commercialism. And yet, without the idea that rights are derived from a higher power, they become merely good ideas, not inherent, inborn traits that are immune to negotiation."

But the editorial shoots itself in the foot by going off topic, complaining about the drop in class scores and the recent decision by NBC to omit "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance during the U.S. Open Golf Championship. Tenuous connections at best.

On the other extreme is David Greenberg, who argues in Slate magazine that "the founders opposed the institutionalization of religion." In support, Greenberg brings out the old argument that the founders had separation of church and state in mind when they created the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The writer notes that the basic Constitution itself mentions religion only to keep religion from becoming a qualification for public office. And he points out that the Pledge of Allegiance was first written in 1892 without "under God," a phrase added during the 1950s.

Greenberg brings up (and seems to vilify) the religious revival of that decade as an attempt to infect government with religion. He somehow links the positive thinking of Norman Vincent Peale with John Foster Dulles' opposition to communism. Greenberg is silent about the two Great Awakenings, although the second one helped to bring about the abolitionist movement.

Some facts may help in this morass. And a good source for them is a recently published book, "American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us." In a recent interview, co-authors Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell make several "whoaaaa" observations:

America is somehow "religiously devout and religiously diverse but also religiously tolerant." Despite all the culture war news, Americans across all religious lines believe there are good people and "basic truths" in other religions. The engine driving this is simple: making friends and having relatives across religious lines.

Religious observance is affected by politics. "Our data show that people make choices either to attend church or not to attend church based in part on their political views," Putnam says.

Opposition to abortion and homosexuality is ingrained into many conservative churches. That's why Republican leaders can get church support by emphasizing those issues.

Although America is strongly ecumenical, it also has a strong "prophetic tradition," embodied in movements like women's suffrage and the civil rights movement.

He approvingly cites author Thomas Kidd's thesis that the American Revolution succeeded not because of religion per se, but because of "an unlikely alliance of evangelicals, Enlightenment liberals, and deists working together."

Interestingly, both sides wanted freedom, but for different things. Evangelicals wanted freedom from government interference so they could preach the gospel and hasten the Rapture. Religious liberals wanted freedom from religious majorities so they could approach spirituality from what they considered "self-evident" truths.

"It was not that the founders wanted to write religion out of the new nation; Kidd insists that they tended to view robust religion as indispensable to a good society," Mundra says, "but that there was a widespread current of thought -- among both the preachers and the Patriots -- that involvement with worldly power tended to enervate and corrupt true religion, so they were careful to reserve ministry for the ministers."

A final thought from Mundra: If evangelicals, mainline Christians and nonbelievers could form coalitions in the 18th century, can their descendants do the same in the 21st? "There's reason to believe that the founders, with their probing prescience, were prepared for the U.S. to become a truly pluralistic place," he says.